Remembering Ramadan

I planted the bulbs for these crocus flowers in Ramadan. At that time we had read about how the Sahabah used to pray to Allah in the six months before Ramadan to extend their lives so that they could fast Ramadan and in the months after they would pray that Allah accept their fast of Ramadan. When I planted the bulbs I thought that inshAllah they would flower once we were around halfway to the next Ramadan, which it is. A time to think about what we have been doing since Ramadan, have we been keeping up with the intentions of that month? Have we prayed that Allah accept our last Ramadan, are we hoping for the next already?
And what better promt to the rememberance of Allah than the sight of some of His springtime creations?

Its been a usual sort of day. Nothing wrong with that, alhamdulillah. Ia has improved a lot on her initial sounds, and her addition to totals less than 10 is coming on well. The boys continued the storyboard for the history of Shu'ayb (as) and began using new workbooks for French.

Seeds

These are some seeds my children chose to grow for our garden, inshAllah. Ia chose pink nasturtium and pompom asters. The boys wanted giant sunflowers. I haven't grown flowers from seeds before, so we are all learning together. Today we planted lupin seeds in a compost tray, and left it on the kitchen windowsill. Our garden shed is glazed and shelved on one side, so it's a kind of potting shed. But it may be too cold still, and probably I'd forget to water anything I left in there!

Sure I know what the books say about the germination of the seed, and what it needs to grow, but this doesn't make me any more sure about caring for them correctly. The seeds will only grow if Allah wills. I really hope they do grow!

The Coconut

To cover the history of the Prophet Shu'ayb (as) we are making a "storyboard" to go on the wall. Yesterday we divided the account into eight points. For each we will, inshAllah, draw and write a poster so that when they are displayed they tell the story. More on that when it is done inshAllah.

The highlight of the morning was the arrival of a coconut (the brown hairy type) in the fruit and vegetable delivery. Now, I have never had to deal with such a coconut before, and I did not know what to do with it. The kids tried striking it with butter knives, to no effect. So I butchered it with a meat cleaver. This took a long time and so much husk flew around the kitchen that I'm sure to be finding bits of it in odd corners for months to come. The kids drank the juice, mixed with other fruit juice, and we munched on coconut. A new experience for us all. (There must be a better way.)

For the rest of the day's work the boys used the Iqra workbook to study tasfir of Surah Kafiroon, we started the activities from the Farming Matters activity book I downloaded from FACE, Ia did bits of workbooks and a collage with old wrapping paper, and so on and so on. Alhamdulillah.

Running After Myself

Today has just been.....
U has been very funny, maashAllah. She helped me mix up muffins this morning, but that is not the funny bit. U says that when she is bigger and I am her age, she will look after me. This is what she will do for me when our roles are reversed, she will get me to sleep at night (but I will have to sleep in my own bed), when I call she will bring me a drink in a cup with a lid on it. She will give me food, buy me toys, allow me to watch TV and she will teach the boys. She will shout at the boys until they come downstairs, then they will do good writing. She will also look after Papa when he is a little boy, but Ia will be her sister.

Today we got into the geography farming project. I finished reading to them the library book we had borrowed, featuring four farms in different parts of the world. Then I came across this excellent farming educational resource. InshAllah I will be making use of the primary level materials on there. Today we watched the video about farming, then we discussed these questions:
Where are farms?
What are farms for?
What do farmers grow?
How do farmers decide what to grow?
The purpose of these questions was really to open up the hugeness of this topic, to show the boys how varied farms must be, and the importance of their role.

But we didn't get everything else done that I wanted to today. So much of everything to do!!!

Round and round and up and down

Using interlocking cubes of one colour at a time we made sets of rods of lengths 1 to 8.

Then we joined together sets of two colours to represent the number bonds for 8.

Then using the bicoloured rods to help, Ia wrote down the number bonds.

Today has been tiring in an illogical kind of way. Busy, yes. With enough to account for all that busy busy? Not sure. Anyway, I apologise for the disjointed nature of this post.

Yesterday we went to the library, so these past couple of days have involved lots of reading. This morning began with reading library books with the girls. Later I read the boys their usual story of the sahabah and a chapter from “The Woodbegoods”. In between they read their library books. We also read the history of the Prophet Shu’ayb, and started reading a geography book on farming around the world. Lots of reading. Its so easy it almost feels like cheating.
The boy’s maths has been about circles. Drawing circles with a pair of compasses, cutting and folding circles, learning about degrees of an angle, learning about the directional compass.
Think about this, I heard on the radio today that a British university is involved in a £2000,000 world wide project to discover whether belief in God is a part of human nature.
Surah Al-Araaf 172 “When your Lord drew forth from the loins of the children of Adam, their descendants and made them testify concerning themselves. (Saying): “Am I not your Lord?” They said “Yes, we testify to it” This in case you say on the Day of Judgement, “We were unaware of this.”
This information is available free of charge, thanks to the mercy of Allah, but no amount of money can buy imaan. Looking for answers to questions which have already been answered, that is really going round in circles, with all sense of direction lost.

Having some social time

I don't pick flowers, but these were knocked over by a football, so I brought them in.
We've been having visitors and making new friends. I don't plan for "holidays" from home education, I find that from time to time we will become temporarily busy doing social things, and that becomes a holiday time, or at least a time for a reduced timetable. It is time to get back into things fully again now though!
The kids were given a gingerbread house kit to make. The list of ingredients looks as if a knowledge of chemistry is required to understand it. It was fun to make though. There were more candies and icing to go on but the thing was about to collapse, so they stopped. Shortly after the photo it all caved in. Today I shall have to negotiate how much of it I will actually allow them to eat.

Muddy Carpets

A consequence of lots of outdoor play in a muddy February garden. Lots of muddy trousers to launder too.
Ia's maths activity for today was as follows: I drew a 6x6 grid on 1cm squared paper. In the first line she shaded one square in one colour, and the other 5 squares in another colour. On the next line she shaded two, and four, the third line three and three. By this time she understood the pattern. The last line was coloured in one colour only. This coloured grid represented number bonds for 6. Then, next to each line she wrote out the matching calculation (1+5=6, etc). This done she used cusinaire rods to place over the coloured squares, thereby representing the number bonds once again.
Later we went to the park with friends. It was very busy, because of school holidays. There were seven children in our party today. I love to see them race ahead into the park, together. But they made me think of the other children we have enjoyed park visits with in the past, in other parks. It is really such a privilage to share our lives with children. Alhamdulillah.